Gary Totten (English) published the article, "'Time Is a Flat Circle': The Naturalist Visual Aesthetic of Contemporary Television Crime Series," in the journal Studies in American Naturalism. Totten discusses HBO’s True Detective seasons one (2014) and three (2019), while also
comparing Netflix’s Bloodline (2015–2017) and Ozark (2017–2022). He demonstrates how the visual aesthetic of these series — including camera angles, color palettes, editing cuts, and setting details — coincides with specific modes of storytelling to create a television subgenre that reflects literary naturalism's emphasis on the social, biological, and environmental conditions influencing human character. The article is based on an invited talk that Totten presented at the "American Literary Naturalism and the Visual/Digital Symposium" in Cork, Ireland, in fall 2022.